


Frieda

by zorilleerrant



Category: Static Shock
Genre: Bullying, Episode Related, Gen, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Sexual Harassment, since the episode is Jimmy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 09:08:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11078445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorilleerrant/pseuds/zorilleerrant
Summary: For Static Shock Appreciation Week 2017, favorite episode - Frieda thinks about the rampant bullying at the school





	Frieda

**Author's Note:**

> dialogue (in italics) is from the episode

_“…can’t believe you wanna hang with all those losers. And Osgood’s the king of ‘em all!”_

 

Nick wasn’t as bad as most of the guys at school – or, at least, he wasn’t as bad as most of the guys who enjoyed being vocal about what great prospects they were. There was still hope for some of the population, Frieda thought. Not Nick, but some of them. His obsession with Jimmy, though – it had taken more than half of Frieda’s preparation time just to make sure nobody was grouped together who _should not be grouped together_ , and Captain Dickhead was no small part of that. (Frieda’s dad had told her that she worried too much, and to just put the groups together at random. That would’ve gone well for Jimmy.)

Maybe Frieda was a little sensitive because of the kinds of things Nick and his friends liked to say to Virgil and Richie. After all, he’d never done anything _particularly_ egregious, not that she’d heard about, anyway, and Frieda liked to think she was a very friendly and optimistic person, always giving people the benefit of the doubt. And second chances. Many second chances. Too many.

The fact that she couldn’t find _anyone_ who would want to work with the guy said a lot, really. And his friends weren’t even available until hours later, so she’d put her own name down for this section, and she was trying hard not to regret it.

 

_“He’s okay. Maybe a little shy.”_

 

Frieda liked Jimmy. He was a lot to handle, in that she had to watch her every word and gesture, and that got exhausting quickly, but Frieda liked to put in the effort when it was clear someone was coming out of their shell. First impressions and judging a book by its cover and all that. She couldn’t say they were friends (well, yet, maybe someday), but she could say they were friendly, and, honestly, at this point she’d be happy to defend a literal stranger against whatever the hell this jackass was on about.

She could explain. She could go on for hours, actually, and point out every reason someone should give Jimmy Osgood a chance, and every reason it was the school environment to blame for what was happening. Hell, Frieda liked psychology; if you let her at her computer for a minute, she could send you a dozen articles about the traumatic effects of bullying. She’d written a pop psych summary for the school paper, but the principal (for obvious reasons) hadn’t allowed them to publish it. She’d gotten a few positive comments when she put it on her blog, though. Not even all of them from the other people at the paper.

This guy, though? Was not listening.

Frieda wasn’t going to waste her time explaining when she had better things to do, like paint, or put up decorations, or stare in boredom at a dust mote for the rest of the day. She wondered if Nick even noticed she was calling him out for his shitty characterization of, well, everyone in the world, practically.

 

_“Well I’m not shy. How’d you like to go out after Fright Fest tomorrow?”_

 

And just like that, it stopped being about keeping the peace, and started being about Nick.

Frieda was surprised at the thoughts that went through her head. First it was that he had assumed shy was a bad thing, why did he assume that, how had she possibly insinuated that shy was a bad thing, although maybe it was, a little, it made people hard to talk to, but it wasn’t bad the way leaning into someone’s space and leering at them was bad. Then it was that he had decided Jimmy was his competition, why had he decided that, what was with boys always decided every other boy in some girl’s vicinity was an opponent, but if he did, why not Virgil, who she spent a lot of time with, and that was probably racism wasn’t it, like Virgil was dangerous and unattractive in a way that stepping into her space and blocking her way to the exit somehow wasn’t.

Then it was irritation at him flaring up in the retorts she paged through in her mind’s eye, incensed at his audacity in assuming she would ever like him like that, the way everyone always treated her like they knew she secretly liked them, telling her rather than asking, not hearing the no they were never willing to expect. Then it was confusion that he thought after Fright Fest was a good idea, when she’d be working the whole time and too tired to really enjoy a date even if she had wanted to go on one, and why was everyone such a bad planner, was it really everyone but her who just couldn’t figure out what would be too much for one person, because Daisy would’ve got it, and she wished Daisy were here right now.

At no point did she consciously register the way her back tensed and her vocal cords tightened up and the exits all looked circled in brand-new highlighter and her fingers shook just a tiny bit, tiny, not enough for him to notice and take exception to. She did consciously register that she was doing her best to placate him, taking on a calm and apologetic tone, but it was after she’d already done it, and before she’d managed to step close enough to the nearest weapon to be willing to scream in his face.

 

_“Well, we’re all sort of going out together, at Burger Fool….”_

 

It was calculated to defuse the situation, to make it clear that no one was a threat to the creature’s dominance, that it was just bad timing, poor planning, something the fickle little girl would have to think about before coming to the inevitable conclusion. Whatever would allow Frieda to get behind a locked door.

Because Frieda was all too familiar with yelling, swearing, words that probably should never be said to a human person, and no stranger to the hand around her wrist and the arms on either side of her shoulders and breath like lava on her skin. And she’d been in one too many locked rooms with only one other person – one was one too many – and she’d never heard a story about this guy, but she’d heard stories that named no names.

She’d heard stories about the bleachers after the game and the locker room during it, she’d heard stories of lunch detentions that the teachers didn’t bother to stay for. She’d heard about the blind turn in one corner of the lunchline and the hallway in full view of all eyes. She heard about the clubs that assigned buddies to new members and wouldn’t let you change them, the ones that sometimes had everyone show up and sometimes just one guy, the ones that had more boys than girls and poor supervision.

She heard about the teachers who tried not to know and the teachers who didn’t care.

 

_“You and Osgood, huh?”_

 

For once, Frieda wouldn’t have minded belonging to someone, being the known property of some boy, an accessory that he was nonetheless fond of and didn’t want anyone else messing up or ruining. She thought maybe she should’ve picked out a jock the way they picked out Frieda, but instead for his hulking frame and intimidating glare. She thought maybe, if she thought on her feet, if her mind weren’t iced over at the edges, she could pick a name out of the air and show it to the predator, who would hiss and arch his back and run away.

And she was scrabbling to grab on to any handhold as the conversation swerved nearly off the road only she was slammed back into herself as they skidded to a stop, one word repeating over and over in her mind as she tried to figure out _why he was constantly going on about Jimmy_.

She’d thought they’d changed the subject already.

 

_“What?”_

 

This was – was he coming at her just to get to Jimmy? Was that what it was? That Frieda wasn’t even prey herself, she was just another object for them to destroy in their relentless campaign to break some kid who would never have even talked to them unprovoked? Did he even realize what he was doing, or was he just enjoying the terror he visited on people, not even knowing what it was he was enjoying? Did he genuinely think he was interested?

_Was_ he genuinely interested? Which was the side benefit?

And Frieda tiptoed through the catalog of her mind again, and there it was, she was looking through the wrong index all along, because for all the unnamed attackers that didn’t quite fit, there were so many stories attributed to just _somebody_ that did fit, that fit exactly, that she would have seen sooner if he didn’t just sometimes make her skin crawl the way he stared too hard down her shirt. Because that problem was never _Frieda_ ’s problem, just one she’d been trying to sell the school paper on every single issue so far.

Because Frieda didn’t get cornered at the end of the lunchline, she got people pressing too close from behind. She didn’t get shoved into lockers, only shoved against them. She didn’t get her assignments ripped up and her projects smashed, she got badly worded study date invitations and people who failed on purpose so they needed tutoring.

Frieda didn’t get messages to kill herself, just unsolicited penises all over her blog.

And this monster was the other kind.

And Frieda thought again about the teachers who turned away quickly so they wouldn’t have to see, the ones who walked through the halls with their heads ducked, the ones who ate away from the students to be away rather than alone. She thought of the teachers who came up with alternate explanations every time something was brought up, or asked if she had just misunderstood, or wondered if it had really happened at all, if it was as bad as all that. She thought of the teachers who rolled their eyes at her. She thought of the teachers who looked her right in the face and told her that boys would be boys.

 

_“Yeah, I hear you and he are, like, best friends.”_

 

After that, Frieda wasn’t trying to stroke his ego anymore. She wasn’t looking to save her own skin. It had stopped being about a relationship she could use as a shield, because it wasn’t even her the asshole was seeing, she was just the latest angle in a different kind of campaign; if it had been anyone else Jimmy was warming up to, she would’ve been the target instead. Hell, if Frieda had said yes to his invite, the asshole might be gone already. He wasn’t trying to fuck _Frieda_ , he was trying to fuck _Jimmy’s girl_.

And who knew how many times it had worked before Jimmy? There’d been at least two hospitalizations already this year alone, and Jimmy seemed close to the breaking point himself.

Frieda was counting through the anonymous letters that had been dropped in her inbox, the interviews with people who didn’t want their names known and who didn’t care as long as she could make their voices heard and where it didn’t matter anyway because everyone would recognize them because everyone knew. She was counting through the times she’d seen hot coffee bring up welts on someone’s skin, the times they’d played keep-away with inhalers or insulin or epipens, the times she’d seen a hand shoved down someone’s pants the _other_ way and laughter echoed through the halls. She was counting how many warnings someone got before a suspension, and wondering why the numbers were coming out different.

This time it was very conscious and very deliberate and Frieda knew exactly what she was doing when she spoke from somewhere outside herself

 

_“No.”_

 

and congratulated herself on being convincing. Jimmy didn’t deserve this any more than she did, and from what Frieda could tell, had less practice in the way of protecting himself, and maybe didn’t know how at all.

Maybe he didn’t know the body language there, the loose and languid way you held your arms, never straightened, never tensed, the way you looked like you were stepping closer even as you edged away. The way you never looked angry or frightened or irritated or even surprised. The way you smiled gently, gracefully, prettily, the way you took their words in as if they were beauty writ large and you would never hear their kind again.

Maybe he didn’t know the words to use, the tone, the musical quality of a laugh in just the right place. The way you said things slowly, calmly, hedgingly, the way you offered suggestions instead of opinions, the way you built off their ideas even if you wanted to scream how true it wasn’t at the top of your lungs. The way you never said no, you just guided and guided until they thought of the no themselves, brought them carefully to water and convinced them that you could choose whether or not to drink, too.

Maybe he didn’t know the trick of looking frail, delicate, smaller than you are, hoping you’ll seem like something to protect, something too fragile to harm, instead of the easy target you always are, the target they thought you were already except that now you seem sweet, cute, like a pet or a little sibling, something you can hope they don’t want to _touch_.

But Jimmy probably doesn’t have _that_ problem, anyway. Or maybe he does. The blurred out pseudonymous figure in front of Frieda clearly isn’t good at telling when a body is and isn’t his to touch. She tries to find another way to tell him no but kind. Not for herself, this time, not even for another girl the way she has just too much practice with, but for someone in a different spot than she usually stands over shielding.

 

_“Hey, if you like the guy, what can I say?”_

 

You could say, ‘wow, I’m an asshole, I should stop.’

You could say, ‘Frieda isn’t mine to treat as I will. Jimmy isn’t either.’

You could say, ‘I accept that you aren’t interested and won’t bother you again. Any further romantic interaction is at your discretion.’

You could say, ‘sorry my behavior has been threatening. I’ll work on improving it without involving you any further.’

You could say, ‘the impression I’ve made on my fellow students is too negative to overwrite, and I don’t blame them for it.’

You could say, ‘you’ll never hear from me again.’

You could say, ‘I’m a bully. This is bad.’

You could say, ‘I have my own problems, but the people I’ve been menacing aren’t responsible for solving them, and I’ll work through them without your help.’

You could say, ‘from now on I’ll attempt to develop compassion.’

Frieda doesn’t say any of this. She stands her ground the subtlest way she knows how.

 

_“I am not interested in Jimmy Osgood.”_

 

Words are a weapon that Frieda knows how to wield. Not her only one, but her first and her favorite and the one she wields best. She knows the exact velocity and angle of every single one, where the impact will only injure and where it will incapacitate. She knows how to hurt with words, how to threaten only, how to make a show of defensive capability or teach someone else how to block. She knows where each strike will fall. She knows every inch of her weapon and she practices with it daily, bracing for recoil and learning how to compensate for the way it changes her. She improves. Sometimes slowly, sometimes in bursts of speed, and always steadily working not to lose the progress she’s made. She trains those who need it and won’t use it to harm. She fights gracefully.

Frieda sometimes forgets about the ricochet.


End file.
